The Register Strikes Back!

[Zoom]

Pathetica Episode 5
The Register Strikes Back
--

It is a dark time for the store. Literally! We had a blackout and everything.

The story of how we got new registers is a bit of a long one, but it's either that or the even longer one about our worst employee EVER which is forthcoming. (Hint: it isn't me.)

Ahem.

It started, like all stupid things do, with a tiny rumor that quickly grew into majestically awful proportion and threatened to swallow us whole. The rumor says that we will be getting new uniforms. Blue ones.

I was used to the blue ones some 10-12 years ago, when they switched to burgundy. (No, it was non-alcoholic.)

Then the rumors started getting worse. We will be required to wear BLACK shoes. No athletic footwear. We will also be required to wear a collared work shirt underneath (Hey! Wait! On some days I would sweat if I wore one! I know this because I do wear a collared shirt from about October to March (remembering to take it off to launder it, of course) and anything over 50 degrees outside means I can't go around wearing the extra layer. I even made sure last time I didn't have to wear the optional vest with the ensemble.)

Then we started getting sarky comments from riff-raff (one step on the Ladder of Suckiness above an SC) that they're surprised that we haven't switched to the new uniforms or registers yet.

Registers??

It happens, I figured, that one store is bound to have a more advanced system because Manager A will spend more money than B. B-cause he's an idiot.

"Oh no, this is companywide."

So apparently by June we will have the new uniforms and registers and everything will be a nightmare, like the time that we ordered 1,000 copies of the Ron Santo book and nobody bought it. Even though the man had just died.

But still nobody of authority higher than Rumor Manager told us about the registers.

I remained calm.

Longtime readers of my Tales of Pathetica may remember the Great Vanishing Bag Fiasco, where in two years we were supposed to abolish completely all plastic and paper bags, and just sell cloth bags. Well, three years have gone by, and the other choices are still polluting the store, the Earth and the greed of those with a practical bent to keep their $1.99 away from a bag that actually disintegrates faster than a plastic one!

You see my skepticism!

But then in April, they announced about the new registers, along with the usual baloney about these new ones being much better, to give us more options, etc. Again I paid little heed.

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Surprise! They were lying to us after all. There will be no new registers or uniforms in June.

Instead, we will get new registers in May and new uniforms in August!

This actually became a problem for me, as I was trying to get a 3-week vacation in May, and I was told C*** (our suckiest manager right now) was refusing to allow any vacations more than 2 weeks in April/May, and she was not going to allow any vacation time the week of the new registers.

I somehow got 2 weeks and a couple days tacked on to it on "the week", but it was harrowing to not be sure if I could actually make it.

OK, once vacation ends, I foresee humongous disaster. I wait for them to train us. Surely they must show us how to operate the register so we can operate it! Or do we just start pressing random buttons and yelling "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!"

My expectations of catastrophe, however, also extend to Manageria. I predicted they wouldn't know how they work either.

But about a week before May, they had installed one of the new behemoths for training purposes at Register 7, where nobody would ever go to get rung up because customers somehow don't believe it exists. (Apparently they can only count to 6.) Even John Cleese's dead parrot wouldn't get rung up there and join the Choir Invisible Rewards Program.

The training consisted of B. showing us, five at a time, not waiting for all of us to get there, saying sarcastic things and poking fun of those who were late or had asked a stupid question (in a nice way though), how to use the register.

Everything had changed. I shan't go into details, but man, are they expecting us to remember all of this? And I had a million questions, but we had to breeze through training so fast that I couldn't think of the obvious problems with the new setup.

For example, they put the screen/keyboard jobs TOO HIGH. I remember the original ones when I joined Pathetica in 1993, they were at waist level, under the scales, and were almost never ever used except for "Sub-total", "Total" and "Self-Destruct". Their replacements in 1996 or so were pretty good, though the screens were too bright and I was afraid of the radiation being so close to my eyes that I used to put a piece of green celluloid in front of it (yeah, that was silly of me, they were good LCD screens and I shouldn't have worried).

But now they are towering higher than the 2001 Monolith, and cannot be lowered. B. didn't have an answer to why we couldn't lower them.

I ought to wear wrist braces now and put in for workmen's comp because of the strain being put on my hands, but my hands aren't listening to me and acting all hurt; instead they're fine. "What's wrong with you?" I shout at them. "You've been Sieg Heiling the buttons all day!"

They must be fans of the Duran Duran song about reaching up for the sunrise.

WIC usage is completely mad now. Now you have to hunt and peck to find the WIC button in a sea of menus. Then you get to ring up the stuff. Any customer scans the Patheticard first, NOPE! Void it and start over. Being told in mid-order "Oh, this is a WIC..." NOPE! Void it and start over. Ring them up by mistake because we're not used to the new way of doing things? NOPE! Chuck Tesla.

Now the day approached slowly where the other registers would be installed. I think it was a full moon (or maybe there was a special on green cheese). The store was quiet, and all indications were that as the remaining stuff HAD to be ready and operational by tomorrow, that TONIGHT it would all go down.

No sign of the guys who were supposedly coming to install them... I got off at 10pm and had to start the next day at, yes, 6am! The Grand Opening was going to be a suckfest either from my lack of sleep or experience, but I knew I could count on my apathy to see me through.

Then, after I had to swipe the store card for some "entitlediot" who forgot theirs, SUDDEN EXPLOSION NOISE AND BLACKOUT!

And it wasn't even raining or lightninging!

"Did I do that?" I asked, knowing some sarky sack of spit would pretend-blame me anyway. (Though nobody did for some reason.) Everything reset under emergency power. "It's a good thing we're getting rid of this junk by tomorrow," I remark to a random custy as we prepare for the long haul of ringing up the long lines that have formed. (And I don't want to see long lines at 10pm!)

Now the BOSS (yes, you heard right, longtime readers, I said "boss" and not Bosshole(TM), because our new one is a nice guy. Oh well, can't lose 'em all.) comes downstairs and starts discussing matters with a couple of managers about how we blew the transformer, and that our power company will be here shortly to fix matters.

Meanwhile, one of our managers becomes proactive suddenly and decides that while we're running on emergency power, it's potentially dangerous, and decides to close the store!

I look outside for a second (the store's gone quiet since we've cleared out the excess custies). No other lights have gone out, so it's just the Pathetica transformer. Now there are a few SCs who are trying to get into the store, and we keep telling them to stop their shopping and leave.

This is one of those lose-lose situations. Every time something like this happens, we either put people in "danger", or we have to turn them out, which if it happens often enough they get the general idea, and never shop here again. Plus the store is losing money and possibly some food will spoil.

Instead of them sending me home early (hey! I wanted to get some sleep for tomorrow!) they have me do some overstock. (We have a sloppy clientele who will go all the way to the back of the store, where the milk is, to put the front end magazine they just finished reading.)

I realize, of course, this isn't such a bad thing, because a) I am adept at it, and b) it's not like I'm going to get much sleep anyway, but I also realize that when I do overstock, I always end up with more than I started, because I keep finding out of place artifacts on shelves.

Just as I get one of the carts (oh man, nothing but junk, I'll be all over the store on this one) and start to trundle down the tiled floor, these guys with a giant suitcase rack filled with computers show up! "We've brought the new registers, is the manager here?"

At the same time, the power company guy comes up front and says, "Wow, your transformer actually caught fire."

I managed to get away from these bozos (even though I wanted to see them set up), but as I start putting things away, I hear the Unholey Boss saying to minions, "Get out more tarps! Everything is going to spoil when emergency power runs out, so we need to keep all the freezer doors closed and covered with tarps!"

Great, how am I going to put back the cold items with these big plastic sheets-- which are taped to the cooler's edges so they can't be opened-- in the way? I hurry and get what I can put back before they show up with their implements.

Usually by this time in a blackout, they get the transformer repaired and we can let people in again, but I overhear it has to be replaced. We might as well have all gone home, except there's these registers that have to be installed, come hell or high voltage!

And they aren't! I finish the first cart and head to get the second one, where I see progress hindered by... the still-unopened suitcase rack of comps! And now there's another one with the new monitors. And another one with the new screen/keyboards. And the same three guys talking like it's a water cooler. (Which it will be when it melts.)

I guess they couldn't install everything under emergency power, because they had to test the setup and it might drain too much power, but I got the hell away from there as fast as I could run, back to the sanctuary of the shelves. I couldn't get any more put back, though; the cart was full of items that had nowhere to go, probably because they were no longer for sale, but nobody would admit that.

By the time I left (10pm, natch) all the freezers and coolers were taped shut, there were computers just sitting around as if waiting for someone to take them home, and plenty of customers waiting outside the locked doors hoping for a chance to buy food.

Next day, the installation was finished, but everything was molasses, supercooled to -423° Kelvin. Nobody could remember how anything worked. What do you press again? We all heard the mantra, "Item Menu [button] is our friend", but this was apparently a friend who was not willing to help out in times of need. Lots and lots and lots of overrides. Then we realized half of the overrides were unnecessary as we could have just removed the item by putting the cursor on it and hitting "Remove item" instead of voiding it.

Then the first tragedy struck. Something not discussed in training and not foreseen.

Previously, under the old register regime, Link Card with coupons was either no good (had to ring everything separately) or had to be done with Link first, then coupons. (Custies always seem to prefer it the other way around.)

Now, however, you can't scan a coupon AFTER doing the Link Card. And why not? Because the Link Card has been used. We have to UNDO the Link Card transaction so we can use the coupon.

How do you UNDO the Link Card transaction? Nobody knew. At one point I had 2 managers and 1 customer all running a roundtable discussion as to what could be done. Finally they just told me to key out the coupon as cash.

There are a litany of problems with the new registers. There are lots of extra confirm button presses required even when NOT getting cash back. You can no longer hit "Credit" after you slide your credit card, even though the machine still doesn't know which card it is! No, you have to hit Yes. ("Which one is Yes?" is the most common question asked by SCs.)

For Link Card, you have to slide the card, then hit EBT button (what, really? I thought that was just there for show... been there for 15 years and never pressed before.) then ANOTHER button for Food, and THEN enter the PIN, and that was only the customer! I have to wait for all that before I have to press 2 buttons that are too high on the keyboard and I need to borrow a ladder or some drugs to make me fly up there to press them.

On the plus side, our hand scanners are much better. (They now also scan feet!) And they have little triggers so we can pretend they're sawed-off phasers. (I like letting the wash of red light comb the front of my face as I start singing, "In the year 2000...")

I've gone on for far too long, so I'll stop here. I'll close by saying we haven't got the new uniforms yet (I bet they push it back to September, where it'll interfere with my next vacation time. Bastards.)